The Milwaukee Brewers have spent the season turning preseason skepticism into a running joke.
After sweeping the Baltimore Orioles over the weekend, the 2026 Brewers reached 98 wins, a new single-season franchise record. They still have a couple more chances in the final week to get to 100 for the first time in team history, but even at 98, they’ve already locked down the best regular-season mark the franchise has ever produced.
That milestone is the latest step in a stretch that has become pretty familiar in Milwaukee. This is the Brewers’ fourth straight 90-win season and their fifth in the last six years, along with another NL Central title. It’s a sustained run, built on the organization’s own formula, even as the rest of the league keeps trying to talk itself into somebody else.
And that’s where the preseason predictions come in.
Again and again, the Brewers were treated like a team that had lost too much or couldn’t possibly keep pace. Again and again, they’ve blown past those forecasts.
ESPN gave Milwaukee just a 41% shot at making the playoffs and projected an 83-79 finish. The Brewers were also slotted 11th in the outlet’s Opening Day power rankings, behind the Tigers, Cubs and Mets. Bradford Doolittle did correctly forecast that Pat Murphy would win his third straight Manager of the Year award, and that prediction is looking stronger by the day.
Baseball Prospectus was even lower on the Brewers’ ceiling, pegging them at 81-81. That wouldn’t have left Milwaukee in the playoff picture at all. Craig Goldstein wrote: "Look, get mad if you need to, but the Brewers can't outperform expectations unless we set some."
FanGraphs wasn’t much kinder. It projected the Brewers at 83-79 as well, and somehow ranked that worse than the Pirates. Their playoff odds came in at 41.7%, behind the Royals and Orioles.
Now the Brewers sit at 98 wins and counting, with a chance to push into triple digits before the season ends. Once again, the numbers and the forecasts missed the mark. Once again, Milwaukee made them look foolish.
In Other News...
Brewers May Have A Pitching Edge Most Teams Still Ignore
The Brewers have built one of the more interesting pitching identities in the league by leaning into something many teams still talk around rather than fully embrace. William Contreras and Gary Snchez are among the most aggressive catchers when it comes to setting their targets right through the horizontal center of the strike zone, a setup that nudges pitchers toward throwing more strikes and keeps the game plan aimed at the heart of the zone.
It is not the conventional formula, especially for a staff that does not exactly dominate the walk column, but it has helped Milwaukee create an edge that shows up in the run prevention numbers. Layer in the teams heavy fastball usage and the result is a pitching approach that looks like a modern outlier, the kind analysts such as Doyoung-Tom Kim, Joshua Rodrigues and Lau Sze Yui have been able to spot in open-source models before it becomes obvious to everyone else. [Read more 🡒]
Brewers Get Encouraging Late Answers From One Playoff Push And Triple A
Late-season baseball gave the Brewers a little something to note on both levels of the farm system, even as the calendar ran out on Triple-A Nashvilles year. The Sounds closed with a series loss, but the final stretch still offered a useful look at the depth Milwaukee has been stockpiling, with individual performances and roster roles coming into focus as the season wound down.
At Double-A Biloxi, the tone was much brighter. The Shuckers not only locked up a playoff spot, they finished by sweeping a three-game set against the Blue Wahoos, the kind of finishing burst that keeps a development staff interested going into the next round. For a Brewers organization that always prizes whats coming next, the contrast between Nashvilles ending and Biloxis surge was a reminder that the pipeline still has some momentum. [Read more 🡒]
Brewers Enter October With A Pitching Decision Finally Taking Shape
As October approaches, the Brewers are leaning into the one part of the roster that has carried them all year: the pitching staff. Pitching coach Chris Hook said the group looks more prepared than it did a year ago, and the numbers back up the optimism. Milwaukee enters the postseason with the second-best ERA in baseball at 3.54, a strong foundation for a club trying to win with run prevention and depth.
The real challenge now is lining up the right arms for the NLDS, and the picture is finally starting to come into focus. Jacob Misiorowski, Logan Henderson and Dustin May are all expected to factor prominently, and Milwaukee has already adjusted its pitching plans with an eye toward postseason readiness, including scheduling starts for May and Henderson. The Brewers do not have to guess what they are, but they still have to decide how best to deploy it when the games matter most. [Read more 🡒]